Some good, classic dwarves at last - armours, helmets, big axes - and it comes in 15 mm too, from 15mm.pl of course. Company will start its website in a couple of days, then I will announce some sort of competition with cooperation with owner. But for now we have these dwarven warriors armed with two handed weapons. As all other miniatures from this range they paint very well - good, deep sculpt, very well defined faces, nice details. I've decided to leave mould line running across face of the one miniature, as removing it would destroy facial details and I wanted to make it as a kind of bluereddish scar.

I coax for commenting (all comments are viable, negative ones too - I may disagree with them sometimes, but every comment allows me to further develop my skills), joining followers and "liking" blog and posts on Facebook.

Last of the first five plastic ghouls painted mostly by airbrush. Working on them was both easy and satisfying. Additionally I tried one more new technique - well, new for me of course - oil wash. I used them a long time ago, about 25 years, while painting plastic models. It was enough to discourage me from using them for a long time. A very long drying time and mediocre effects put me off. Well, it turned out I was really wrong. Good oil paint mixed with good quality painting turpentine make wonders. It is ideal mix for washing, as the liquid doesn't leave visible much darker outline, it is possible to paint shadows with it or to use it as a glaze to make base color slightly different (red-blue discolorations next to the scars were made this way). I even used it as a highlight - most of highlights on this minitaure are done with white oil wash, painted in layers. I didn't blend it at all - turpentine did it for me. Drying time - few minutes max. I heartily advice to try it for yourself. I will try to write more about this in a couple of days, illustrating text with photos of oli wash on miniatures.

I'm really, really glad how these miniatures turned out. They are not, of course, masterpieces - but time spent to quality of painting ratio is so much in favour of this method, that I'm certain I will use it more and more. And as I just got a new, very good airbrush, I will try my hand at painting different miniatures too.

One more thing - mandatory group photo of finished five ghouls at the very end of the post.

Christmas... We are sitting at the tables, eating, talking with family and friends, having good time but... In the darkness of the night yet another Astarte of the VII Legion is hiding. His armour and equipment tell us that he took - probably - part in Horus Heresy and now returns from Eye of Terror to slay and raise fear among the followers of the Corpse Lord. My brother, Mormeg, is still working on his Night Lords. This miniature was finished some time ago. I relly like the "ancient" feel of it, coming from such details as different helmet, greaves and backpack, chainsaw bayonet on the bolter, etc. I think that slightly changing brightness of the armour was a good idea too, as the miniature is still very dark but details are now perfectly visible.

Ghoul photography, visible next to this note, is a kind of tester really. Well, its really cool that my undead minions are growing in numbers but, to be honest, I spend a lot of time lately thinking about this blog. As you probably already know, this blog is important part of my hobby. It motivates my painting, it allows me to meet new geeks, etc. No wonder I'd like to improve it, make it more attractive. Is it something I should add or remove, to write about something, to stop writing about something? One of the changes I'm thinking about is a way of presenting photos. Let's not talk about quality of them and quality of my painting - I know, that there is a lot of people making both of these things much better... But... how should I show my pictures? Leave them as they were? With one photo visible next to the text as a kind of teaser and collage of photos under the smaller or larger wall of text? Or, maybe, just this teaser photo and text? Or, as it is today - one long strip of larger photos? I wanted to make something like such photo strip long time ago but it wasn't practical in old layout. Now, when notes are much shorter on the front page, it is viable option. And if it looks good - should I leave them as they are today or should they be vignetted (like the teaser photos are)?Well, it looks that I forgot about 1600 pxs limit for Picasa photos (default hosting site for Blogger accounts). Well, let's try single photos then...

Old, metal ghouls do have sort of charm, I like them a lot. But these new plastic corpseeaters are growing on me too. They have fantastic muzzles, full of expresion, with a lot of tiny details. Miniatures are dynamic - even though most of the poses are really similar due to necessity of lining figures in a rank and file unit. I changed my mind on various spikes and bones protruding form the flesh even. I like these miniatures so much, that I will definitely buy another box.The one shown today is painted with airbrush, again. It was almost fully highlighted with airbrush too, just final, brightest layer of highlights was painted with a brush, as were all the details.

Looking for miniatures just before my last WH40K game I counted my painted miniatures. Well... The number is really, really small. I made a decision to strengthen my Black Legion, so in a few coming weeks there will be more painted miniatures of Abaddon's followers. I would like to finish berzerker squad and cultists squad from "Dark Vengeance" boxed set. Here it is first of the freshly painted Khorne's butchers. I wanted him to be a part of the squad, so color scheme is the same as with earlier miniatures but black armour is painted in entirely new way. Everything is airbrushed, shadows, highlights, etc. Then details were added. I really like this method... So much, in fact, that I have about dozen another miniatures prepared that way, they are sitting on my "to do" shelf right now. I changed my painting process too. As I wanted some additional miniatures for the game, I glued them. Usually, especially with 28 mm scale miniatures, I paint some of the parts separately - be it a head, weapon, arms, etc. - as I want to have a good access to all details of the figure. Well, as it turned out painting fully assembled miniature wasn't so bad. I didn't paint just one, small area on the miniature, as it was virtually unaccessible, so it was left in black basecoat.

I found that I'm out of chainaxes too (most of the earlier painted figures are armed with them) but this isn't something I'm really concerned of. As I play with friends, it's suffice to say that all miniatures are armed in the same way. Additionally, some swords in the unit will add to the visual aspect of the finished squad. While painting chainsword, I tried my hand with painting hazard stripes. Well, it didn't turn out too well but practice makes perfect. Hazard stripes on berzerker weapon doesn't make much sense from the fluff point of view but let's pretend this is weapon taken from the loyalist enemy...

One more thing - Opera, Safari and older versions of Firefox users are unable to correctly see Blogger dynamic views. New versions of Firefox are working fine, but Opera and Safari wont - even the newest versions. This is known for a long time, unfortunately both Opera and Safari producers wont correct it. I'm really sorry but blog is not working correctly on these browsers.

My experiment with painting plastic ghouls with airbrush goes on. This miniature was prepared in the same way as previous one - with basic skin tone airbrushed on, and then with three or four progressively lighter shades of this tone airbrushed from above to get gentle highlights on raised areas. Then, after the paint was dry, all what was left to do was to paint details, like hairs, bones, etc. and making some variations in skin color. This corpse eater is more greenish then previous one - there were two washes added. First purple was was applied to all recesses and skin folds, then green wash was mixed with Fortress Grey, and this color was used for highlighting. Final highlights were painted with Rotten Skin color.

While looking for some miniatures for my last WH40K game, I found truly last this time, half-painted ten years ago Black Legion berzerker. I finished him after the game was over, in livery of Legion of Horus and Abaddon of course. Helmet is left as it was painted all these years ago. I painted shoulder pads, finished all details and so on. Backpack is totally new too. I think this is visible on the photos, as the miniature itself was painted and highlighted black years ago and backpack is painted and highlighted in different way, by airbrush. Speaking about backpacks - the ones in old berzerker boxed set have nice khorne symbols but they doesn't fit at all. They must be cut and filed to sit on the back of the miniature. Well, as I wanted to finish this miniature as fast as possible, I used the standard Chaos Space Marine one - it fits perfectly, no Khorne rune though.

Quite a long time ago, after one of my Warhammer battles, I found that I really need another dozen or so ghouls. As I needed them rather fast, I decided to not paint them - at least for a while. Just glue, some basic, white primer, then dark wash to define details and... voila, ten of new plastic ghouls are almost ready for battle. To battle they went, and then on my "shelf of shame" - to other half-painted miniatures, standing next to my desk, silently reminding me that I really should finish them... Well, to be honest, their chances of being finished in foreseeable future were really slim, as I want to paint all old metal ghouls first (and still have eighteen of them to paint). But... last Friday I was basecoating some models with airbrush and there was some dark grey paint left. I looked at the ghouls and decided to paint them just for fun, airbrushing them with shadows and highlights. First I covered them in dark grey paint - it was airbrushed from every possible angle, I wanted to get even, smooth surface of basic color. After that I painted highlights, using lighter and lighter shades of grey, spraying paint from above miniature only, to get even, smooth transitions of highlights on the skin. I wasn't able to paint "dot" highlights unfortunately (my airbrush is really, really shitty) but I was satisfied with results achieved so far. Paint lasted for five ghouls.As I was really pleased with painting so far, I decided to finish first highlighted corpse-eater. Miniature was finished with old Citadel Purple Wash mixed with Fortress Grey. It took about an hour to finish it - all bones, spikes, hair, nails, final highlights, etc. Add to this about half an hour for airbrushing, changing paints, cleaning airbrush, etc. So hour and a half for fully finished 28 mm miniature which looks really ok for me. Hmmm... Did I find a way to paint my hordes of rank and file miniatures?